National Project Management Maturity: A Conceptual …One of the most popular maturity models today...

CENTRAL EUROPEAN BUSINESS REVIEW

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NATIONAL PROJECT MANAGEMENT MATURITY: A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

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Seelhofer, D., Graf, C. O.

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This paper extends the concept of organizational project management maturity to the

national context. Based on a review of the extant literature and a thorough analysis of

existing organizational maturity models, it develops a systematic framework of national

project management maturity and the national project management maturity model (NPM3),

by defining maturity levels, identifying key maturity perspectives and drivers, and discussing

key performance indicators that may be used to assess and compare national project

management maturity. Practical implications, limitations, and the need for further research

are discussed.

Keywords: project management; maturity

JEL Classification: L20, L78, M10

1 Introduction

Organizations profit from competent project management, which can be a significant

organizational success factor (see e.g. Pinto and Prescott, 1988; Shenhar, Levy and Dvir,

1997; Milosevic, 2003; Srivannaboon, 2009; Lundin and Hällgren, 2014). The two large

international project management associations, the U.S.-based Project Management

Institute (PMI) and the Europe-based International Project Management Association

(IPMA) have both experienced substantial growth in recent years, and according to

KPMG’s 2017 Project Management Survey the significance of organizational project

management is expected to increase further in the coming years.

Competent project management, therefore, is clearly relevant. Yet according to the

Standish Group’s Chaos Report, which has been published every year since 1994, about

two thirds of all projects fail (Standish Group, 2018). And the Project Management

Institute estimates that around 12% of all investments are wasted due to poor project

performance (PMI, 2016). This clearly has far-reaching economic implications. Yet

despite these numbers, the wider public generally only realizes the importance of project

management competencies when failures of large public projects become known. As

Kreiner (2014, p. 20) puts it: “[…] but in short it is failure, not success, that dominates the

narratives of projects and their management.” In the United Kingdom, for example, the

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Ministry of Defence’s Defence Information Infrastructure project (a defense computer

system designed to help Britain's troops operate more effectively on deployment abroad),

the National Health Service’s National Programme for IT (a centralized electronic care

record system that would have connected about 30,000 general practitioners to more than

300 hospitals) or the Scottish parliament building (which opened three years late and ran

about ten-fold over budget) have all become synonymous with failed public projects. In

another large developed economy, Germany, famous examples include the Flughafen

Berlin Brandenburg project to build a new international airport in Berlin, which is

expected to be about ten years behind schedule and at least four times over budget when it

finally opens. In another German case, Stuttgart 21, a new underground central train

station in Stuttgart will be at least 6 years behind schedule and is expected to exceed its

original budget by a factor of at least four; or the Elbphilharmonie, a new concert hall in

Hamburg that was almost seven years late when it opened in 2017 and cost more than 11

times the originally planned amount. These examples may be surprising, considering that

both countries have a good project management reputation and active project management

bodies. In the United Kingdom, the PMI’s local Chapter has around 3,500 members, while

the IPMA’s local certification body, the Association for Project Management (APM),

counts more than 23,000 members. The IPMA’s German chapter, the Deutsche

Gesellschaft für Projektmanagement (German Association for Project Management,

GPM), also has around 8,000 members. Yet large-scale project failures continue to happen,

and governments should take an active role in combating this. The United States, for

example, have continuously emphasized the importance of project management at the

government level after having won the Space Race of the 1960s— due to its, at the time,

advanced project management competencies. In line with this, former president Barack

Obama signed the Program Management Improvement and Accountability Act in 2016,

which was designed to increase accountability and best practices in project management

throughout the United States government.

The question, however, is what a country can do to increase project management

competence not just at the government level but across the domestic economy, thereby

contributing to the agility and national and international success of its domestic firms. A

promising conceptual start are project management maturity models that are widely

employed at the organizational level but have so far not been extended to the national

stage. This paper attempts to start a corresponding discussion by suggesting a framework

that can be used to assess national project management maturity (NPMM).2 Theoretical

Framework

2 Literature Review

Organizational project management maturity has been described as the organization’s

openness to project management (Skulmoski, 2001). Project management maturity models

provide capability assessment and development frameworks that help organizations


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compare their project delivery and performance to its competitors and/or with best practice

and provide a structured path to improvement (Schlichter and Skulmoski, 2000; Hillson,

2001; Foti, 2002). The model’s roots lie in the Capability Maturity Model developed

between 1986 and 1993 by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon

University (Grant and Pennypacker, 2006).

One of the most popular maturity models today is the Organizational Project Management

Maturity Model (OPM3). The OPM3 program was initiated in 1998 with the aim to

develop a standard maturity model. Introduced in 2003, OPM3 is now in its third edition

and is widely used. It revolves around three core themes: acquiring knowledge, performing

assessment, and managing improvement (PMI, 2013). Based on a large number of best

practice examples, organizations are enabled to evaluate their project management

capabilities and identify areas that need improvement, which are then dealt with by

designing and implementing an appropriate action plan.

Besides OPM3, there is a substantial number of other maturity models. An initial list was

presented by Schlichter and Skulmoski (2000), and in 2003 Pennypacker and Grant

estimated that there were over 30 project management maturity models in use then.

Nonetheless, the usefulness of the maturity concept is not a universally shared view. On

one hand, project management maturity is seen as an increasingly important success factor,

especially for organizations that deal with a range of projects, programs, and portfolios

(Bushuyev and Wagner, 2014) because of a reported link between project management

maturity and organizational performance (Torres, 2014). This link has been attributed to

the fact that an increased understanding of an organization’s capabilities enhances

organizational learning and improvement (Mullaly, 2006), that application of the model

implies decisions are based on facts rather than intuition and experience (Cooke-Davies

and Arzymanow, 2003)Also, such models provide a structured and systematic framework

for identifying an organization’s project management-related strengths and weaknesses

(Backlund et al., 2014), which in turn may contribute to better prioritizing actions and

initiating cultural change (Crawford, 2006).

On the other hand, some authors question the link between higher maturity levels and

organizational success (e.g. Besner and Hobbs, 2013), while others lament that existing

models are too complex for efficient assessments and address only tacit but not implicit

project management knowledge (Jugdev and Thomas, 2002; Hillson, 2003).

Despite these comparatively isolated criticisms, however, the concept of project

management maturity is by now widely accepted and applied not just at the organizational

but also at the industry level. For example, in 1997 Ibbs and Kwak used the Berkeley

Project Management Process Maturity model to compare the U.S. engineering and

construction, high-tech manufacturing, telecom, and information systems industries with

each other and found that, back then, the first three evidenced significantly higher project

management maturity than the last but that, overall, maturity was comparatively low across


the board. In 2006, Grant and Pennypacker used the PM Solutions Project Management

Maturity Model to analyze the U.S. manufacturing, information, finance and insurance,

and professional/scientific/technical services industries and also found that project

management maturity was consistently low in all these industries. In 2011, Ghoddousi,

Amini, and Hosseini used the OPM3 to analyze 81 Iranian construction companies and

discovered that almost two-thirds of them had a project management maturity of below

50%. In line with the notion of performance benefits of project management maturity, they

also found that only companies which showed noticeable maturity levels had been able to

win projects based on international tenders.

Other examples where such models were used to analyze industry-wide project

management maturity include: the software industry in Estland (Puus and Mets, 2010), the

engineering and construction industry in South Africa (Pretorius et al., 2012) and Morocco

(Alami et al., 2015), and the Serbian energy sector (Mihic et al., 2015). All these studies

found generally low levels of project management maturity. The preliminary results of the

OPM3 Portugal Project (Silva et al., 2014) and Backlund et al.’s (2014) case studies of

Swedish engineering and construction companies also suggest the same.

From a national perspective, this low level of project management maturity across

important industries should be worrisome. If project management maturity is a competitive

factor at the organizational level, then the same should be true at the aggregate industry

and, by extension, national level. In line with Michael Porter’s seminal theory of the

competitive advantage of nations, where government plays an important role as a

facilitator of advanced factors like infrastructure and education (Porter, 1990), a country

should actively foster and improve project management maturity. In fact, various emerging

economies have been the subject of early efforts to improve project management

capabilities and to identify obstacles to development in an attempt to overcome

competitive disadvantages. For example, Kazakhstan organized and hosted the 2017 IPMA

World Congress in Astana, welcoming around 1,000 project management professionals

from around the world. A study of the impact of project failure on Zimbabwe’s socio-

economic development concluded that corruption and other factors like irresponsible

government led to a so-called unconducive environment that preceded—and, indeed,

promoted—project failure (Mapepeta. 2016). And Ghana (Ofori and Deffor, 2013),

Indonesia (Simangunsong and Da Silva, 2013), and Kazakhstan (Narbaev, 2015) were the

subjects of early attempts to measure and develop national project management maturity.

Despite these efforts, however, there presently seems to be no holistic framework to assess

a country’s national project management maturity.


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3 Methodology

Reasonably, a framework of national project management maturity should follow the logic

and structure of existing organizational maturity models. In order to do so, the most

relevant models must first be identified. This was done in a three-step process.

In a first step, a full list of project management maturity models in current use was

compiled through a systematic review of the extant project management literature. This led

to a list of 36 different models.

In a next step, the academic relevance of these models was determined based on a

quantitative and a qualitative criterion. First, the number of citations for the corresponding

base articles was retrieved from Google Scholar. The resulting scores where then ranked in

descending order and the two lower quartiles excluded, which left 18 models. Second, the

remaining models’ relevance in the literature was analyzed and rated as low, medium, or

high according to how they were discussed. All those rated as low were excluded, which

left 11 models.

Finally, the practical relevance of each of the remaining models was assessed by four

project management experts. Of these, two were university lecturers in project

management. Both represented either a formal focus on project management or a unit with

‘project management’ in its title. The other two were senior project managers employed in

the private sector holding formal project management certification. All had at least 10

years’ worth of experience as project managers. Practical relevance was measured as mean

score of the individual assessors’ subjective evaluation of each model, measured on a scale

from zero (’not relevant’) to three (‘highly relevant’). All models which were rated less

than two (‘somewhat relevant’) were excluded from the final list. This process led to the

identification of seven models of current, practical relevance that provided the starting

point for the development of a framework of national project management maturity. A

basic model of national project management maturity was then derived by systematically

comparing and synthesizing these frameworks. Finally, key performance indicators and

associated basic assessment rubrics for the model were obtained by collecting and

aggregating inputs for each point from the above-mentioned experts.

4 Results

The seven models identified as having both current academic and practical relevance are

listed in Table 1.

Developed at the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University and first

introduced in a technical report in 1987, the Capability Maturity Model Integration

(CMMI) was intended to eliminate the need for multiple models during software

development by integrating three existing capability maturity models, the Capability

Maturity Model for Software SW-CMM, the Systems Engineering Capability Model


SECM, and the Integrated Product Development Capability Model IPD-CMM (Humphrey,

1988). The CMMI defines five maturity levels and has been applied in the airline,

automotive, banking, education, engineering, health care, IT, and telecommunications

industries.

Table 1 | Comparison of Existing Project Management Maturity Models

Model (Acronym)

Origin (Year)

Description Maturity Levels Industry

Application

Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI)

Humphrey (1988)

Eliminates the need to use multiple models for software development by integrating various CMM models.

1-initial; 2-managed; 3-defined; 4-quantitatively managed; 5-optimized

Airline, automotive, banking, education, engineering, health care, IT, telecommunications

Berkeley Project Management Process Maturity Model (PM2)

Ibbs and Kwak (2000)

Integrates previous practices, processes, and maturity models to improve project management effectiveness and allow benchmarking.

1-basic project management processes; 2-individual project planning; 3-systematic project planning and control; 4-integrated multi-project planning and control; 5-continuous project management process improvement

Engineering/construction, IT, telecommunications, manufacturing

Organizational Project Management Maturity Model

(OPM3)

PMI (1998)

Helps organizations understand project, program, and portfolio management and measuring maturity by a wide-

ranging set of best practices.

1-standardization; 2-measurement; 3-control; 4-continuous improvement

construction, education, engineering, gas and energy, health care,

IT

Kerzner Project Management Maturity Model (KPMMM)

Kerzner (2002)

Presents methods to assess and verify each level of project management maturity. Extension of the CMMI model.

1-common language; 2-common processes; 3-singular methodology, 4-benchmarking; 5-continuous development

Education, health care

Project Management Maturity Model (PMMM)

Crawford (2006)

Allows organizations to systematically and efficiently develop and measure their project management capabilities.

1-initial process; 2-structured process; 3-organizational standards; 4-managed process; 5-optimized process

Airline, construction, education, IT

Project Management Maturity Model (ProMMM)

Hillson (2001)

Allows diagnosis of the current maturity level and need for improvement; provides a foundation for progress evaluation. Based on CMM, EFQM Excellence Model, and Risk Maturity Model.

1-naïve; 2-novice; 3-normalised; 4-natural

-

Portfolio, Programme, and Project Management Maturity Model (P3M3)

OGC (2006)

Provides three maturity models that can be used separately to focus on specific areas of the organization and to help assess the relationship between portfolios, programs, and projects.

1-awareness; 2-repeatable; 3-defined; 4-managed; 5-optimized

Public sector, transportation

Source: Own elaboration


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First published by Kwak and Ibbs in 1997, the Berkeley Project Management Process

Maturity Model (PM2) integrates previous practices, processes, and maturity models with

the intent to improve project management effectiveness and allow benchmarking. Like the

CMMI, it defines five—albeit different—maturity levels and has been applied in the

engineering and construction, IT, telecommunications, and manufacturing industries.

Introduced by the Project Management Institute (PMI) in 2003, the Organizational Project

Management Maturity Model (OPM3) was designed to help organizations understand

project, program, and portfolio management and allow measuring four levels of maturity

by benchmarking against a wide range of best practices. It has been applied, for example,

in the construction, education, engineering, gas and energy, health care, and IT industries.

First published by Harold Kerzner in 2002, the Kerzner Project Management Maturity

Model (KPMMM) is an extension of the CMMI and presents methods to assess and verify

each of five levels of project management maturity. It has been applied in education and

health care.

The Project Management Maturity Model (ProMMM) is based on the CMMI, the EFQM

Excellence Model, and the Risk Maturity Model and was intended to allow easy diagnosis

of an organization’s current maturity level and need for improvement, thus providing a

foundation for progress evaluation (Hillson, 2001). Although not widely applied at

industry level, the model was deemed of relevance by the polled experts because of its

simplified evaluation of four maturity levels by evaluating four attributes:culture, process,

experience, and application, in a rubric style.

Sharing a name with Hillson’s earlier model, PM Solutions’ Project Management Maturity

Model (PMMM) was first published in 2002 and was developed to allow organizations to

systematically and efficiently develop and measure their project management capabilities

based on five levels of maturity (Crawford, 2015). It has been applied in the airline,

construction, education, and IT industries.

Finally, the Portfolio, Programme, and Project Management Maturity Model (P3M3) is an

integrative framework aligned with, for example, the PMI’s Project Management Body of

Knowledge (PMBOK) and various UK government models. It was first introduced in 2006

by the UK’s Office of Government Commerce, although in 2014 ownership was

transferred to Axelos, a joint venture between the UK Government and consulting

company Capita. The model provides three maturity models—for portfolios, programs,

and projects— with five maturity levels each that can be used separately to focus on

specific areas of the organization (OGC, 2010). It has been predominantly applied in the

public sector and in the transportation industry.

Following the logic of these organizational project management maturity models, it makes

sense that a national project management maturity model should also be level-based.

While language and number of levels differ between the various models in Table 1, the


models all follow the same logic, from nascent to mature project management. For national

project management maturity, therefore, the following four levels are proposed: nascent,

developing, adolescent, and mature.

Nascent maturity implies that there may be some isolated attempts by a few (mainly large)

organizations to use project management best practices, but this is neither routine nor

systematic, with little support by the government and project management associations.

Developing maturity means that project management best practices are only infrequently

used by a minority of organizations, without systematic support from the government or

professional associations. Adolescent maturity is given if project management best

practices are routinely—although not always consistently—used by the majority of

organizations, with systematic support by professional associations and some support by

the government. Finally, a country is mature regarding national project management

maturity if project management is routinely and consistently used by the vast majority of

organizations, with systematic support by the government and professional associations.

Table 2 summarizes this.

Table 2 | Definition of NPMM Maturity Levels

National Project Management Maturity

Level 1: Nascent Level 2: Developing Level 3: Adolescent Level 4: Mature

There are some isolated attempts by some (mainly large) organizations to use project management best practices, but this is neither routine nor systematic, with little support by the government and professional associations.

Project management best practices are only infrequently used by a minority of organizations, without systematic support from the government or professional associations.

Project management best practices are routinely but often inconsistently used by the majority of organizations, with systematic support by professional associations and some support by the government.

Project management is routinely and consistently used by the vast majority of organizations, with systematic support by the government and professional associations.


With these levels defined, the next question is how to gauge the maturity level of a

country. Importantly, all of the organizational project management maturity models except

the ProMMM define a varying number of so-called knowledge areas, i.e. specific areas

that the organization must know about in order to gauge maturity. The PMMM, KPMMM,

and OPM3 each define ten, the PM2 nine, and the CMMI eight such knowledge areas. The

P3M3 does not specifically refer to knowledge areas but instead defines seven

perspectives, although contextually these conform to the knowledge areas of the other

models. When put together, a list of 34 knowledge areas and perspectives results. By

comparing these and eliminating those that refer to the same concept, 18 distinct

knowledge areas emerge. In alphabetical order, these are: benefits management,


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communications management, cost and finance management, governance management,

integration management, monitoring and controlling, performance management, planning

management, product and process management, quality management, resource

management, risk management, scope management, stakeholder management, strategic

management, supplier and procurement management, teaming and HR management, and

time management. Table 3 provides an overview of these 18 knowledge areas and whether

they are included or not in each of the seven models.

However, this comparatively large number of knowledge areas may lead to an unwieldy,

inflexible, and unnecessarily complex assessment process. With regard to national project

management maturity, therefore, in line with Hillson (2001) these 18 core knowledge areas

were condensed into eight proposed national project management maturity (NPMM)

perspectives: project governance and controlling (combining governance management and

monitoring and controlling); project planning and organization (consisting of integration,

scope, product and process, strategic, teaming and HR, and planning management), project

execution (merging time, performance, and benefits management), project

communications management, project resource management (consisting of cost and

finance, supplier and procurement, and resource management), project quality

management, project risk management, and project stakeholder management. Table 3

summarizes these deliberations and provides details on how these NPMM perspectives

were derived.

In contrast to the other models discussed, Hillson’s (2001) Project Management Maturity

Model (ProMMM) does not define specific knowledge areas but lists four ‘attributes’—

culture, process, experience, and application—that are used to describe the organization’s

project management maturity using a kind of rubric. Regarding national project

management maturity, this seems a sensible approach because, due to the myriad

differences between countries, keeping the resulting model to a fairly abstract level should

make it more generally applicable. Hillson’s ‘attributes’ can be considered drivers of

project management maturity because governments and project management associations

may actively support them. When applying this logic and adapting Hillson’s approach to

the national level, this leads to four maturity drivers: national project management culture,

national project management process saturation, national project management experience

sharing, and national project management application support.


Table 3 | Derivation of NPMM Perspectives

Knowledge Areas

Maturity Models

NPMM Perspectives CMMI PM2 OPM3 KPMMM PMMM ProMMM P3M3

1 Governance management

X X

Project governance and controlling 2

Monitoring and controlling

X X

3 Integration management

X X X

Project planning and organization

4 Scope

management X X X

5 Product and process management

X

6 Strategic management

X

7 Teaming and HR management

X X X X

8 Planning management

X

9 Time management

X X X

Project execution 10 Performance management

X

11 Benefits management

X

13 Communications management

X X X X Project communications management

12 Cost and finance management

X X X X

Project resource management 14

Supplier/procurement management

X X X X

15 Resource management

X

16 Quality management

X X X Project quality management

17 Risk management

X X X X X X Project risk management

18 Stakeholder management

X X X Project stakeholder management


National project management culture refers to the existence and characteristics of a system

and mindset, at the national level, that fosters project management best practice. The more

effective and efficient such a system and the more natural such a mindset, the higher

national project management maturity is.

National project management process saturation indicates how widely used standardized

project management processes are. The more this becomes second nature in as many

organizations as possible, the higher maturity is.


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National project management experience sharing refers to the availability of

information—and the efficiency with which it can be accessed—about project

management best practices and lessons learned. Regulations that enforce the sharing of

project charters and reports or the existence of experience-sharing platforms contribute to

higher maturity.

Finally, national project management application support refers to initiatives and systems

of government entities and professional associations that support organizations when

managing their projects. Examples are freely available project management

methodologies, such as the Swiss government’s HERMES or the European Union’s

OpenPM2. Project risk mitigation mechanisms, such as export risk guarantees for large

construction projects, can also be considered part of this.

Figure 1 summarizes the final national project management maturity model, or NPM3.

Figure 1 | National Project Management Maturity Model (NPM3)

The NPM3 closely follows the conceptual approach of relevant organizational project

management maturity models. It necessarily diverges regarding key performance

indicators (KPI), however, to compare the project management maturity of two countries,

a much higher level of aggregation and some specifically country-level indicators is

required.


Regarding project governance and controlling, the stringency with which project

governance is adhered to at a national scale—particularly in the case of large private

projects and public projects of national significance—indicates how mature the country’s

NPMM is: the higher the number of projects that conform to a defined standard regarding

project oversight and controlling, the more mature. The same is true for planning and

execution conformity, i.e. the number of organizations that adhere to a defined standard

regarding project planning and execution. This includes both the processes employed and

the best practices used as a benchmark. The specific standard used should not matter as

much as the fact that each project is planned and executed according to one.

With regard to the management of project communications, transparency is highly relevant

at the national level. Particularly in the case of projects of national significance, pertinent

information often only surfaces once the press starts digging in case of scandal or failure.

This transparency principle should apply to all—not just large public—projects, however,

as this contributes to a positive national project management culture.

When it comes to project resource management, which includes project-related factors

such as cost or finance and supplier/procurement management, two aspects are particularly

indicative of national project management maturity: consultant support and overall project

success rate. Consultant support relates to the perceived necessity to include external

consultants in a project. A high proportion of the overall budget spent on consultants

indicates that an organization’s project management is not mature enough to handle these

projects alone. By aggregating and averaging this figure across all pertinent organizations,

the same factor can be calculated at the national level. A second important number is the

overall ratio of successful to unsuccessful projects. At its most basic, success can be

defined as reaching the defined goals on time and on budget. A higher the aggregate

number correlates to the higher national project management maturity.

With regard to project quality and risk management, stringency of adherence and reporting

are two key aspects. At its most basic, stringency can be defined as the number of projects

that have regular quality and risk assessments. Ideally, this follows a standard

methodology, but the main thing is that these assessments occur on a regular basis.

Reports—final or, particularly in the case of large, complex projects, also intermediate—

about project quality assessments and risk reports should be made publicly available.

These may be standalone; however, this kind of information is often included in a project

charter and/or final report.

Similar to quality management, risk management must be stringently applied and

transparently and systematically reported. The more that projects have regular project risk

assessments and the more risk-related project information is available, the higher maturity.

Finally, information about who a project’s stakeholders are and what their influence on—

and their contributions to—said project are should be known. This reduces opportunities


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for corruption and prevents the kind of scandal that regularly occurs when journalists digs

out undisclosed stakeholders and their conflicts of interest, particularly in troubled,

nationally significant projects. Table 4 summarizes these points.

The maturity perspectives described above provide a good picture of the state of project

management at the national level. How fast national project management maturity

improves is largely determined by the maturity drivers, however, and these should

therefore also be assessed. Like in the case of the afore-mentioned maturity perspectives,

this can be done using key performance indicators.

Table 4 | NPMM Perspectives and Key Performance Indicators

NPMM Perspectives

Key Performance

Indicators KPI

(examples)

Definition/ Require Data

Maturity Contribution

High (3)

Medium (2)

Low (1)

1 Project governance and controlling

Stringency of project governance

Number of projects that conform to a defined standard regarding project oversight and controlling

Majority Some Hardly any or none

2 Project planning and organization

Planning conformity

Number of projects that are planned according to a standard methodology


3 Project execution

Execution conformity

Number of projects that are executed according to a standard methodology


4 Project communications management

Project transparency

Availability of information about significant projects, including project charters, progress reports, and final reports with lessons learned

Widely available

Some available

Hardly any or none available

5 Project resource management

Consultant support

Percentage of overall project budgets spent on consultants

Low Medium High

Project success rate

Number of projects that reach their goals on time and on budget


6 Project quality management

Stringency of project quality management

Number of projects that have regular project quality assessments


Project quality management reporting

Public availability of project quality reports

Widely available

Some available



7 Project risk management

Stringency of project risk management

Number of projects that have regular project risk assessments


Project risk management reporting

Public availability of project risk reports

Widely available

Some available


8 Project stakeholder management

Stakeholder transparency

Availability of information about project stakeholders and their influence and contributions

Widely available

Some available



To foster a national project management culture conducive to project management best

practice, four aspects are particularly important: projectification, the professional status of

project managers, project-related career opportunities, and a general project management

mindset.

Projectification in this context means the percentage of all activities carried out as projects.

This is seen as positive because projects are considered to be a suitable organizational form

to react flexibly to internal and external changes, generate innovations, and solve complex

or novel problems (Wald et al., 2015). The higher this number, therefore, the more this

drives maturity. Likewise, the higher the professional status of project managers, the larger

this aspect contributes to maturity. Both points could be quantitatively or qualitatively

defined. If the data can be obtained, a quantitative assessment will foster better

comparability between countries. In order to identify improvement potential, however,

having experts make a comparative assessment based on Tables 4 and 5 will already be

valuable, too.

Finally, a project management mindset—running activities as projects whenever

possible—also contributes to maturity. This is a hard to grasp—and even harder to

measure—concept, however. One simple and normally fairly easily available proxy could

be to use the number of registered members of large international project associations—

such as PMI, IPMA, and IPMA-associated certification bodies like APM in the United

Kingdom—and put that number in perspective to the overall workforce. For example, in

2017 Switzerland had a workforce of 5.01 million. In the same year, PMI’s Swiss chapter

had 1,400 members, while IPMA’s local member entity, the Swiss Project Management

Association, came to about 900 members. The fraction of project management association

members in relation to the total workforce was thus around 0.4 per-mille. In contrast, in the

UK, PMI membership was about 3,500 and APM membership around 23,000 in the same

year. Compared to a workforce of 31.11 million, this brings the same fraction to roughly

0.8 per-mille, or about twice that of Switzerland. Although these are very small numbers, it

seems clear that with regard to this particular factor, the UK is considerably more mature.


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A more qualified statement could be made, however, by calculating and comparing this

figure for all countries and, for example, determining the quartile to which each belongs.

National project management process saturation refers to how widely used standardized

project management processes are. Ideally, this would encompass the use of standardized

methodologies like PRINCE2, IPM, or PRiSM. As there are a large number of such

methodologies, however, and reliably determining their stringent application would be

almost impossible, a more manageable proxy is needed. One possibility is the number of

specialized university programs with a project management focus. This is normally

indicated by a program carrying “project management” in the official program name

and/or degree awarded. As a university may also have project management expertise not

reflected in a program’s title, however, organizational units specifically dedicated to

project management should be included.

The level of systematic experience sharing about project management best practices and

lessons learned in a country can be facilitated by the government and/or professional

associations. The more systematic and widespread, the stronger the contribution to

maturity. The availability of data about project management’s best practices and lessons

learned on one hand and the average remuneration of project managers on the other seem

particularly relevant.

Finally, several factors influence project management application support at the national

level. Specifically, the degree of research funding for project management-related topics,

the existence of government or private support initiatives and systems to help

organizations identify and mitigate project risks, and the availability of free project

management methodologies supported by the government or large professional

associations, such as the Swiss government’s HERMES or the European Union’s

OpenPM2, all increase maturity. Table 5 lists these NPMM maturity drivers, along with

associated key performance indicators and their maturity contribution.

Table 5 | NPMM Maturity Drivers and Key Performance Indicators

NPMM

Maturity

Drivers

Key

Performance

Indicators

KPI

(examples)

Definition/

Require Data

Maturity Contribution

High

(3)

Medium

(2)

Low

(1)

1 National project management culture

Projectification Percentage of all activities carried out as projects


Project manager status

Professional status of project managers

High regard No special recognition

Low regard or ignored

Project-based career opportunities

Number of certified project managers in relation to other countries

Top quartile Second and third quartile

Bottom quartile

Project management

Number of project management association


Bottom quartile


mindset members as a percentage of the overall workforce

2 National project management process saturation

Tertiary project management programs

Percentage of universities with dedicated project management programs


Tertiary project management units

Percentage of universities with dedicated project management units (e.g. centers)


3 National project management experience sharing.

Project management data access

General availability of data about project management best practices and lessons learned

Good Medium Bad

Project manager remuneration data

Availability of data specifically relating to the remuneration of project managers

Good Medium Bad

4 National project management application support.

Degree of national project management research funding

Public spending in relation to other countries


Bottom quartile

Degree of risk protection

Availability of government or private support initiatives and systems to help organizations identify and mitigate project risks

Widely available

Some Hardly any or none

Sponsored project management methodologies

Availability of freely available project management methodologies supported by the government or large professional associations

Two or more available

One available

None available


Now that both project management maturity perspectives and drivers have been identified

and operationally defined, a country’s national project management maturity can be

assessed. Using the simple rubrics in Tables 4 and 5, the level of maturity contribution

(high, medium, or low) can be determined for each maturity perspective and maturity

driver. After completion, an overall picture will emerge that roughly indicates national

project management maturity. To interpret it, a simple linear scoring system may be

helpful. Specifically, if high contributions are assigned a value of two, medium

contributions a value of one, and low contributions a value of zero, and assuming that high

maturity will, at a minimum, consist of eleven high and ten medium contributions and

medium maturity of at least eleven medium and ten low contributions, the following

overall assessment scale emerges:

32-42 points: High national project management maturity

11-31 points: Medium national project management maturity

0-10 points: Low national project management maturity


17

Clearly, the above scale is not yet evidence-based. Empirically determining appropriate

numeric levels will need further research.

5 Conclusion

Like its organizational-level counterparts, a systematic model of national project

management maturity can help to gain a better understanding of a country’s project

management-related strengths and weaknesses. If organizational project management

maturity can improve the bottom-line of these organizations, then national project

management maturity will likely also have an aggregate economic impact. Of course,

collecting the necessary information at the national level can be daunting. That does not

mean it should not be attempted, however. The more dynamic markets and technologies

become, the more valuable project management skills become. By applying the NPM3

framework developed in this paper, a country’s government can actively promote and

support, rather than just passively track or even ignore, project management skills in its

domestic public and private organizations. The concept of national project management

maturity can also contribute to gaining a better understanding of the roles that various

actors in a country, such as government entities, professional associations, universities, and

so on, play in the successful implementation of projects. Such an understanding, in turn,

can be valuable both for supporting the growth of new and the transformation of obsolete

industries and sectors. Furthermore, it can help to identify potentials and shortcomings in

nationally significant projects. This facilitates the reduction of failure-related financial,

political, and/or reputational damage by improving the professionalism with which they

are planned and executed. Additionally, this can improve sustainability in the context of

such projects, such as in the case of the responsible urban development that accompanied

the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, which stands in stark contrast to the derelict ruins

left by various large-scale events in other locations. In summary, national project

management maturity is an overdue concept with clear practical implications.

This paper should be seen as a first attempt at defining a national project management

maturity model. Particularly the various examples of key performance indicators provided

for the maturity perspectives and drivers are, by necessity, still quite generic. Additionally,

the criteria by which a key performance indicators’ maturity contribution is gauged are

only very roughly defined. Future research into the area of national project management

maturity should therefore aim to empirically validate these key performance indicators in

various contexts and further refine the associated operational definitions.

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Authors

Prof. Daniel Seelhofer, PhD

Director, Department of International Business

Zurich University of Applied Sciences

School of Management and Law

Zurich, Switzerland

[email protected]

Christian Olivier Graf, MSc.

Lecturer of international project management

Zurich University of Applied Sciences

School of Management and Law

Zurich, Switzerland

[email protected]

National Project Management Maturity: A Conceptual …One of the most popular maturity models today...

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